


Even When I Sleep

by insominia



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Addiction, Angst, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-05 21:36:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10317479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insominia/pseuds/insominia
Summary: Courier Six returns from the Sierra Madre, with all the horrors it left her with.Originally on FKM





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at the kink meme a long time ago at: http://falloutkinkmeme.livejournal.com/6099.html?thread=15117523#t15117523

Courier Six is missing for six days.

Both she and Boone go into the bunker, drawn by a radio broadcast that promises everything but reveals nothing. Both are knocked out by the gas that floods the room shortly after they enter. Only Boone wakes in the same place where he fell. There is no sign of Six. He goes over every inch of the bunker before, reluctantly, he returns to Forlorn Hope. He knows he won't find her there, if she could have left, she would have taken him with her. He sets himself up at a lookout, watching the bunker, ignoring all else, until Major Polati asks him, two days later, to leave. They can't support themselves let alone an ex First Recon, unless he wants to re-enlist and join their teams. Which he doesn't. He returns to Novac, after eliciting a promise that they will send Six his way when she emerges. The unspoken ' _if_ ' wavers between them.

Novac receives Boone as though the sniper never left. Taking up the night shift once more, he watches the road, specifically the road towards the bunker. He has no intention of staying. He sleeps in Six's room, ignoring his own. He hasn't come back to set up home again. 

On the sixth day Boone sees her. He recognizes her figure from a mile away, literally, despite the unfamiliar jumpsuit. He knows something is wrong. She doesn't walk, she stumbles, looking as though she might collapse at any moment. The vipers open fire on her before Boone reaches her, but by the time he raises his rifle to dispatch them, she has destroyed them. When Boone catches up to her she is bringing a spear down on their limbs, without skill or finesse, reducing whatever remains of their appendages to bloody pulp. Boone has never seen her melee before. 

_'Gotta take the heads, gotta take the heads, heads can still breathe, still breathing, gotta take the heads.'_

She doesn't stop until Boone takes the spear from her. She doesn't fight him, lets him take it, lets him guide her back to Novac. She doesn't say anything to him, and he shies away from the blank look in her eyes. He's seen that look often enough. From behind he sees her otherwise plain jumpsuit is marked with a red 'x', he doesn't know what it means, but he's sure it's nothing good. Her neck is chapped and bleeding, rubbed raw by something no longer in place, yet her hand still wanders to scratch at it, not stopping, even when her fingers come away bloody. 

The room is much the same as when she left it, even though Boone has been living in it. If she recognizes it, she gives no sign of it. Six paces, back and fore, back and fore, her eyes darting everywhere, muttering incomprehensible words under her breath. Boone has to take her pack from her, after a while he suggests she sleeps.

_'Can't sleep, can't go to sleep, won't wake up, stay awake. Stay awake. Need adrenaline, need adrenaline, shots, can't sleep.'_

Boone hides his face in his hands, momentarily overwhelmed. He'd never thought to see her like this, she's never so much as flinched from the horrors they've seen and sometimes inflicted during their travels. The implications of six days living on adrenaline shots sink into him and he makes a decision. It takes three shots of med-x to bring her down. Hardly noticing him, Six doesn't react to the pin pricks in her arm, until she slumps against him, fast asleep. He removes the Pip-Boy, strips the jump suit and sighs with relief when he sees that aside from the marks on her neck, she bears no unusual injuries, though her skin is littered with the usual array of cuts, scrapes and bruises that testify to the daily struggles of the wasteland. He lies her on the bed and covers her, watching the steady rise and fall of her chest, the almost peaceful expression on her face and wonders if she will be Six when she wakes up.

 

* * *

 

 

The smell of sizzling brahmin steak rouses her, late the following afternoon. She has slept for almost twelve hours, but Boone doesn't want to wake her. He has gone through her pack, hoping he might find something within to explain her absence, but there is nothing but more questions. Small jars of an unfamiliar, misty, red powder clink against bottles of a thick liquid that make Boone retch when he sniffs it.  _'Sierra Madre Martini'_  read the labels, some in Six's hand, some in one Boone doesn't recognise. He hopes that means she wasn't alone. It is the dress that surprises him the most. Folded, almost reverently, at the bottom of the pack is a costume the likes of which Boone could not have imagined still existing in the wastes. A vision in black and red with a fabric flower announcing the indecent cut, it is something straight from the old world. He looks from the dress to Six and places it where he found it. One thing at least is clear, if the sheer amount of cram, pork n' beans and instamash lying in her pack is anything to go by, she hasn't eaten a hot meal in as long as she hasn't slept. 

Boone is slicing potatoes when she calls out. Sitting up, her knees drawn up to her chest, she looks around the room, confusion evident on her face. 

“How did I get here?”

“Walked.”

“I...I don't remember.”

She looks at him for a long time, but doesn't smile. 

“Smells good,” she says eventually. He gives her hand a reassuring squeeze and returns to the meal. She takes a bath while he cooks. Breezing past him, wrapped in a blanket, Boone takes note that she's covered up, he'll take his cues from her and what little conversation that passes between them is conducted with the bathroom door firmly closed. Before he serves up he sees her out of the corner of his eye, pulling out one of those strange martinis and swallows a hefty mouthful, returning it quickly to the pack.

They eat in silence, she doesn't volunteer, he doesn't ask. Not when she tells him to burn the unfamiliar jumpsuit, not even when she freaks out when he turns the radio on. It crackles to life and she is pressed against the furthest wall, her eyes darting everywhere,  _'gotta turn it off, find it, turn it off, gotta turn it off.'_

When Boone turns it off she stares at him, her eyes struggling to focus on. One eyebrow raises and she whispers, “my collar...it didn't...” her hands go to her neck and finds nothing. “Boone?” she asks, as though only just realising he is there. “Where am I? I-” he catches her as she doubles over, her body heaving with sobs. He holds her close as she cries, and for the first time he is glad he's not one to talk, he doesn't think there are any words that can help. 

 

* * *

 

They don't stay in Novac for long. Six gets claustrophobic fast and wants out, Boone is happy to let her, he wants to get her to Vegas, to Arcade, but he doesn't tell her this. Out in the wastes she is much the same as she was before, though he doesn't fail to miss the little things. In combat her hand twitches toward the melee weapon that no longer adorns her back, before she remembers the 10mm on her hip. She drinks more martini than she does water, and she sets up her bedroll on the opposite side of the fire to his. It takes her a while, a long while, to remember that things she kill are dead. When the dust clears he inevitably finds her, on her knees if need be, bludgeoning corpses with whatever she can find to hand, sometimes a weapon, other times a rock, sometimes her bare hands. He says nothing, remembering how hard it was to reach out to anyone after Bitter Springs. If he pushes it he'll make it worse, so he says nothing, and grits his teeth, more out of annoyance with himself than anything else. 

They stop at the 188, Six says she needs to talk to Veronica. Boone slips ahead of her, asks them to hide the radio, pushes them a couple of caps when they start asking bemused questions. Veronica shows up after a couple of days, “supply run,” she says, cheerfully, “unless you need something?” she asks the courier, her eyes flickering towards Boone, Six looks terrible. Boone raises his hands in a gesture of defeat, and when Six takes Veronica aside, he takes a walk. Out of earshot he sees Six talking, Veronica crying, Six crying, Veronica talking. The sun is setting when they look for him, and the three settle around a camp fire, Veronica and Boone share a bottle of wine, Six knocks back her strange martini. When Veronica asks to taste it she almost gags, “how can you drink this stuff?!” she cries.   
Six stares at the flickering firelight, “it's an acquired taste,” she whispers. The three make for poor conversation that night. 

In the morning, Veronica tells Boone she's going back to the Hidden Valley, she has to tell them...she has to think...anyway...she tells him to look after Six. He always has, he thinks, but he doesn't say it. Before Veronica leaves, Six gives her the black dress, and despite the cloud of sadness hanging over her, the scribe is ecstatic.

 

* * *

 

On one of the rare occasions Six deigns to sleep Boone stays close to her, ostensibly taking the watch, but in reality all he's watching is her. He sees her frown and fidget and he is there when she starts screaming. She claws at her neck, shouts for a Dog, Christine, Domino, names that mean nothing to Boone. He pulls her hands away from her neck and calls into her face to wake her. When she opens her eyes he is over her, his hands holding her arms down either side of her head. Any other night this would be a prelude to a very interesting evening, but now she shudders and rolls into a ball, rocking back and fore, trying to banish the dream. Boone rests her head in his lap and whispers soothing endearments to her, it reminds him of a time he had to calm Rex while Six bandaged his leg. She doesn't seem to mind though, her shaking subsiding into gentle trembles. He thinks of the bullet holes in the radio in Novac, of the bludgeoned corpses that litter their road home. He wonders if she cried out for him. He wonders if she'll ever be his Six again, if she'll ever sleep without nightmares, if she'll ever smile. He wonders if she's changed for good and struggles when the thought hurts as though someone has punched him. 

He wonders if Manny ever had moments like this. 

 

* * *

  
  
They drift towards Vegas without either making a conscious decision to do so. As they enter Freeside they call in the Old Mormon Fort, they figure Arcade will be working and they figure correctly. His look of evident pleasure at seeing them is replaced swiftly by a frown when he takes in Six. Boone wonders what she sees when she looks in the mirror; if she sees the strain that the others can't miss. Arcade raises an eyebrow at Boone who of course says nothing, before he turns to Six and asks her quietly if at the very least she'd like some fixer. Boone flinches as though the doctor has slapped him, when Six laughs and assures him she isn't taking anything, Boone agrees vehemently, he hasn't seen her take a single chem. Arcade looks confused, but with Boone in agreement he can hardly persist. When Six wanders off to talk to someone the doctor rounds on the sniper, “ _She has to see a doctor,”_  he hisses, “she looks awful. Sleep deprivation, malnutrition, she's as jumpy as a fiend od'ing on mentats. And that's just what I see here, right now. What's she like out there?" 

Boone closes his eyes and sees her falling on a dead caravan guard they passed, crushing his head with the butt of her gun.  _'They can still breathe with their heads...'_

"She's fine," Boone replies, loyally, opening his eyes before the aftermath of Bitter Springs can creep into his memory, "she'll be fine." Arcade doesn't believe him and says as much. He slips him a pack of fixer, "at least give her this to get her off whatever she's taking," and assures him that he'll see them at the Lucky 38. Boone looks over at Six, swigging a martini, and wonders what she could be addicted to that he wouldn't have noticed.

 

* * *

 

The journey through Freeside is the most difficult leg of the journey. Ironic given that it is both the shortest and largely, the safest. Six is doing ok until they pass the King's place. Dean Martin blares into the streets and Six looks up, sights the speakers attached to the building. She is gone before Boone can grab her, running into the side streets where the thugs reign. 

_'Can't you block it, Christine?! Run! Just move it! Never mind that, go!'_

He finds her clawing at her neck, surrounded by dead men. He doesn't need to look at them to know they'll be missing their limbs. Lowering her hands, he sighs, he'll have to treat her neck later. “Boone?” He is becoming increasingly accustomed to that tone. The tone when she realises she isn't somewhere else, that Boone is with her and if Boone is with her then she is safe. He presses his lips to her forehead, the first time he's kissed her since she appeared in Novac, and helps her to her feet. Hand in hand he leads her back to the main street, holding her fast when she catches sight of the speakers and her eyes widen. Moving in front of her, he blocks her line of sight. “ _Hey_. I'll get you home.” He wants to say  _'I'll get you through this'_  but that seems like a promise too far. His hand pushes her head to look at her feet, and with one arm bracing her shoulders, he all but runs her down the street, past the securitrons, onto the strip. He has already anticipated Gomorrah's speakers and doesn't let her slow until they're inside the Lucky 38. 

The doors close behind them, shutting out all sound and she gulps down the ancient air. For a moment Boone thinks that the worst is behind them, until he sees that she is frozen, staring at the deserted casino. She ducks down behind a counter, peering around it,  _'don't let them see you, Boone.'_  It's the first time her two realities have overlapped, but he's too tired to think about what that might mean. She runs to the elevator, Boone follows. Inside, she sinks to the floor, struggling to catch her breath, a light sheen of sweat glistening over her skin. Boone sits beside her, holding her trembling frame, occasionally reminding her to breathe.

“I'm a mess,” she whispers, more to her feet than him. He can't help but be relieved, it's her first admission that something is wrong, maybe now she can be helped. “You can't know,” she continues, “even if I told you...you couldn't know.”

“I know.”

She looks at him, surprised, but the ghosts of Bitter Springs hover between them. Her eyes widen, he does know. She lets him pull her against his chest and she rests there, trying to compose herself. The elevator doors opened almost half an hour ago.

 

* * *

 

Neither of them can doubt that Arcade has been left in the Lucky 38 alone for too long. His belongings seem to cover every surface; his clothes, laundered or otherwise litter the floor. Six laughs when she surveys the place, a surprising sound that lifts Boone's spirits, and they set to work clearing up after the doctor, though they regret it when it takes them almost an hour to do so. Afterwards they slip into comforting, familiar patterns of domesticity. Unsure where they stand, Boone unpacks in the guest room. Six doesn't ask him not to. She's busy in the kitchen, unpacking a stash of what look like empty tin cans, so he takes a bath. When he emerges the suite stinks to high heaven, the kitchen especially so. She doesn't see him when he enters, even though he's coughing his guts up, suffocated by noxious fumes spewed out by whatever she's cooking. His questions die in his throat when he sees the kitchen table, covered in the strange cloudy jars she brought back and empty boxes of junk food. When Six starts pouring the thick liquid into a line of empty martini bottles, the realisation hits Boone harder than a knock from a cazador. She isn't looking so he slips one of the jars into his pocket. Later he hands it to Arcade,  _'test this,'_  is all he says, before collapsing onto a sofa in the rec room and closes his eyes. He hadn't realised how exhausting all this was. He wants to switch off, put his mind elsewhere, and not think about Six, or if Manny had ever had this much trouble. His reverie is interrupted when he hears Six and Arcade arguing. 

_'I don't need a doctor!'_

_'Uh huh, oh no you're fine. You look fine too. I'm especially enjoying the bags under your eyes and the obvious signs of addiction.'_

The sound of Six's door slamming reverberates around the suite. Arcade finds Boone and asks what exactly happened during their recent jaunt. Boone can only shrug, “found a bunker, got knocked out. She was gone when I woke up. Showed up in Novac few days later looking like hell.” Arcade bombards him with follow up questions, knocked out by what? Gone where? What was she like? How's she been since? Has she been sleeping? Eating? 

Boone only shrugs. Arcade sighs heavily, “Fine. I'll go check this out,” he fingers the jar in his pocket, “I didn't need sleep anyway.”

Boone watches him leave and realising he isn't going to rest after all, makes dinner. When he brings the courier her plate, she's curled up on the bed, staring. Just staring. He sits with her when the thought hits him. 

“You helped me at Bitter Springs. Told me it would help. It did. We did a lot of good that day. If you want to go back? I'd be with you. It might help?”

She rolls over, away from him, “I can't ever go back,” and she sounds almost sad. 

 

* * *

  
  
“Toxic,” Arcade says, without preamble, holding the now empty jar out to Boone. “Poisonous I'd wager in large quantities or with enough exposure. You going to tell me what it is?” Boone is on his feet before the doctor finishes his sentence. He opens the second fridge and gathers up every bottle and tin can in it. 'Don't even look like martinis,' he muses as he pours every last one of them down the sink. When Six catches him she screams, rails at him, hits him, claws at him, but he easily overpowers her. He's never been able to match her in a fist fight before, but now she's clumsy on her feet, unsteady with her throws and he forces her into a chair, slamming both the fixer and a purified water in front of her. He stands over her until she reluctantly takes it, fixing him with a defiant stare. The fixer works quickly, he sees the slump in her shoulders when she realises. She slides to the floor, her face in her hands, “Christ...I'm so sorry,” she breathes. When he leans down to help her up, she throws her arms around him. In spite of everything he holds her close, just happy to have her in his arms again.

 

* * *

 

Whenever they leave the '38, Six keeps her eyes firmly on the door, refusing to look elsewhere, walking quickly. She always takes a deep breath either side of the casino floor, steadying herself, fighting off the panic in her gut. When she passes through Freeside she walks as far from the speakers as she can, gripping Boone's hand tightly. She wants to shout for Christine, but the hand in hers is firm and callous. Not Christine's. 

The injection Julie gives her clears up the side effects of martini withdrawal. She idly wonders if Domino knew he was poisoning her, or whether he just didn't get addicted the way she had...maybe he had. He probably wouldn't notice. From the chair she sees Boone standing just outside the tent. She hasn't really looked at him since she came back. She's not noticed the shadows under his eyes, the strain that draws his lips tight, the way he holds himself rigid, but she sees it now. As they cross the casino she barely notices the holograms, her focus entirely on the man beside her, a man who looks more exhausted than her, if that were possible, just from the effort of holding her together. Inside the safety of the elevator he catches her eye and she sees him physically change, burying the weariness so she can't see it. Six smiles at him, he doesn't smile back, but then he never does. When she kisses him though, his relief is palpable and he kisses her back with abandon, his hands firmly around her waist, unyielding. 

_I've missed you too._  


* * *

  
  
Arcade wants her to go to the New Vegas clinic and mentions it at every opportunity. Boone remains as silent about it as he does everything else. Six appreciates that, she doesn't want to be pushed into anything, shies away from the thought of talking about... _it_. Occasionally Boone asks if she's ok, tells her once that he knows a guy at Golf if she doesn't fancy taking it up with a fancy Followers doctor. Another time he offers to walk her to the clinic if it would help. And just once, in the early hours of the morning as she trembles against him, waking from yet another nightmare, he whispers that she'll be ok. And that he understands.

 

* * *

 

Lying on her back, Six opens her eyes, staring up at the oppressive red cloud. It pushes down on her, tainting the sky a vibrant hue of blood. The casino looms overhead, just visible through the mist, but she can't look at it, she needs to move. The heavy stench of the gas fills her nostrils, her throat, she's choking. 

_'Domino?!'_  Where the fuck is Domino?!

She pulls herself up, coughing and spluttering against the cloud. She freezes. One of  _them_  is beside her, breathing gently into the noxious fumes.  _'Dog?!'_  she screams,  _'Dog! Help me!'_  

The ghost jerks up at the sound of her voice, she starts yelling incoherently for Dog, the ghost grabs her arms and tries to hold them down.  _'Dog! Dog, please!'_  She wrestles her arms free and pushes it down, she feels around the ground, frantically, just to find something, anything to kill it with. It doesn't register that the ground is soft. She can't breathe. Her fingers close around something cold, an empty bottle, and she brings it down on the creature with a sickening crunch. 

She doesn't recognise the voice that shouts, "Six!" near her ear, nor does she know the arms that come around her, pulling her away from the ghost, now groaning in pain. That wasn't right. They didn't feel pain. The arms are pulling her across the ground now, she kicks out and struggles,  _'Don't let them take me, Dog!'_

"Six?! For Christ's sake Six! Stop!"

And then she can breathe. She blinks and the cloud is gone and she is back in the Lucky 38. She knows Arcade, the blonde doctor holding her down, she feels the empty bottle in her hand. It falls to the ground and she gulps down fresh, untainted air. Arcade lets her go and runs over to the bed. For a moment she sees the ghost, hands holding its head, blood pouring from the wound. But something isn't right. Ghosts don't bleed. 

"Craig?!" Arcade shouts, emptying the contents of his doctor's bag onto the floor. Six's eyes move from the bottle to her bloody hands and she can't breathe again.   


 

* * *

  
  
Arcade gives him enough med-x to floor a brahmin and when Boone wakes, his head feels like he's recovering from the worst hangover ever. The doctor chides him when he pulls himself to sit up, noting that he's still in Six's room, but Six herself is absent. "At the clinic," Arcade says before he can ask the question, but without a hint of triumph. Boone winces as he tries to rise, he doesn't want her out there alone, but the pain in his head keeps him down and Arcade forces another dose of med-x on him. Suddenly he doesn't mind too much that she's gone out alone. 

Six appears some time that evening and he knows not all of that time has been spent at the clinic. But she isn't bloody or shaking and her eyes are focused, so he can forgive it. She flinches when she sees him lying in her bed, unable to rise. The black eye he sports is so severe she wonders if she's ended his sniping days. He calls her to him, calls again when he sees her tense and think to run. He snatches her hand up when she gets closer to him and holds it tightly. She almost smiles, but she doesn't apologise. She doesn't need to. He knows. Her time at the clinic helped, or at least it's supposed to have. She feels like shit but she can't risk another night like last night. Neither can Boone. 

He strokes her palm and she talks, tells him about a red sky, things that can breathe after they're dead, a collar, and a love so strong it couldn't let go. By the time she finishes she's beside him in the bed, her head resting on his chest, as he strokes the hair from her face with such tenderness it could break her heart.

_Getting out is easy. Letting go is hard._

 

* * *

 

Boone's eye heals. Six visits the clinic once a week for a long while. One day she walks through Freeside and doesn't turn from the speakers, paying them no attention at all. She doesn't notice. Boone does, and he smiles, relief flooding through him and he feels as though a weight is lifted. He doesn't realise until that very moment how scared he was that she was changed forever. 

Life gradually becomes normal and eventually they start going out again. They wander the Mojave, claiming bounties, delivering messages, fixing things, killing legionaries. Six leaves them with their heads. 

And then, one day, a day over a year since they first heard that seductive call promising everything, revealing nothing, Boone steps into the elevator and realises Six isn't with him. She is paused, looking around the deserted casino floor. He walks back to her, an eyebrow raised in question, “you can't see them, can you?...they aren't really there...never were I guess...”

His eyes take in the musty space. No one is here, no one except them has been here for centuries. “Maybe one day I won't see them either.” She steps into the elevator, Boone follows and jabs the button. As the door closes she tries to avoid the watchful gaze of the holograms that followed her. As her eyes drop to the floor Boone's hand takes hers, and squeezes tightly. As the elevator rises she is suddenly struck by something she'd not thought of until now, “do you think this place has a vault?”

 

 


End file.
